Just enumerating a person's skills doesn't quite give you the full picture of what he's capable of. Most people have little tricks, advantages, or knacks that they pull out when they need a bit of something extra. We call these little knacks stunts.

What Stunts Do

Stunts exist to provide guaranteed situational benefits. These benefits might be the result of special training, unique (but non-supernatural) abilities, or something that's just innately cool about your character. A stunt may grant a character the ability to use a skill under unusual circumstances, using it in a broader array of situations than normal, substituting it for another skill, or using it in a complementary fashion to another skill. A stunt might allow a character to gain an effect roughly equal to two shifts used in a specific way or to otherwise grant other small effects. Put more simply, stunts allow the usual rules about skills to be bent—or even broken. We'll get into how to build your own stunts shortly.

Some stunts may have prerequisites (other stunts or even aspects). Particularly potent stunts may also require the use of a fate point to be activated. In general, a character should not take a stunt tied to a skill he does not have at least at Average level.